"I just have a real hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that they built a neighborhood inside a reservoir."

"Could we have less foresight?"

"Developers should pay for flood insurance for 20 years."

"There was an entire band of idiots involved there."

"All that capitalism, the wise and all-knowing system, and you'd figure they wouldn't build neighborhoods inside a reservoir. Unless.. capitalism.. doesn't.. give a shit about people??"

Capitalism (more accurately, an unrestricted market) works only if the folks involved are self-responsible (buyer, beware, do your own research!). Any one building or buying there obviously isn't. The failure, then, is not capitalism but the short-sighted irresponsibles who figured Murphy's Law only happens to the other guy, and when it does happen some one else will clean up the mess and set things right.

Capitalism (an unrestricted market) and libertarianism (self-reliance) can't work on the large scale if the bulk of people won't self-direct or -restrain.

And since it appears most folks nowadays won't self-direct or -restrain ('Stop me! I'm walkin' offa cliff!') is it any surprise when folks put down roots in a reservoir?

Bred the wildness out of a bloodline, domesticate it, train it to trust and rely and you get stupidity (that there's the result not of libertarian pragmatism, but of communitarian idealism...libertarians don't want 'utopia', but communitarians do).

Lest we forget, super-Capitalist big banks are losing equity on most of this property.

When I paid a mortgage, the bank made damn well sure its equity property was 100% insured and not in a flood zone. Why did they not do that here?

Is it because they know Federal disaster money will pay for its rebuilding?

"super-Capitalist big banks are losing equity on most of this property"

Another group of irresponsibles who gets exactly what they deserve.

The line between 'self-interest' and 'greed' is thin, but the line 'is' there, plain as the crooked nose on my sagging face.

You cross it: you done fucked up but good.

There are so many lovely systems that would work so well if only people behaved properly.

Yeah, but only a practical libertarianism takes people as they are, and holds 'em to it.

All these other 'systems' work to revise man...which ain't cool if you aren't lookin' to be revised.

You're just assuming that because you think you wouldn't have to be revised in your pet system, nobody else would either.

What was this thread before the walls got speckled with shit? Oh, yeah, Harvey, Texas, and rain.

Attachment 61677

At first glance I thought he was talking about me. :blush:

There's this guy named Chris, in Houston, who takes pictures. I wonder what he has to say.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...08053b10fb.jpg

Like a manatee's back.

I wonder if Chris is in country?

Another reason not to drive through water, each section of that Jersey Barrier weighs 2 tons...

The forces...

The greed...